Springheel Jack

In Victorian times streets were lit by gas lamps and each flickering shadow in the many dark alleyways was the perfect breeding ground to bring all manner of imagined terrors to life. Then there were the 'Penny Dreadfuls' the small booklets full of Gothic horror that only served to feed the imagination of just what horrors, real or unreal, lurked in the darkness, so it was no surprise that Springheel Jack flourished in this enviroment...........but was he man or myth ? that is a question still to be answered.

For weeks London had been a buzz with tales of a man monster stalking the outskirts of the city attacking anyone unfortunate enough to come into his path. It was said by those who became this victims that he had 'eyes of hell' which glowed a fiendish red, his hands weren't those of any human being not flesh but steel claws which he used to scratch and claw at his victims, but worse than this was the fire which shot from his mouth. Some had tried to catch this monster but to no avail, just when they thought he was trapped he would spring up on to a nearby roof and bound away.

As long as this talked about monster stayed outside the city Londoners could sleep easy in their beds, then in 1838 Spring Heel Jack came to the eastend. Then there came the vague reports of a strange figure carrying a lantern near Bow Fair Fields in Bromley by Bow, which was then still a village, and again at Old Ford and walking along Bearbinder Road what was then a quiet country road, which became Tredegar Road and part of the eastend proper. These were just fleeting sightings and could have been nothing sinister except Bearbinder Road was the sight of the first confirmed attack. The Alsop family lived at 1 Bearbinder Road which was surrounded by farmland at that time. Mr Alsop was an invalid and the household consisted of himself, his wife and their three daughters.

One evening in Febuary 1838 there came an urgent ringing at the gate, it was 8.45 an unusal time for visitors to call so a little apprehensively Jane the twenty year old daughter went to answer it, she saw a shadowy figure standing in the lane as she reached the gate he said ''I'm a police office, for God's sake bring me a light we have caught Spring Heeled Jack in the lane''.He spoke with such authority that Jane simply obeyed without hesitation and ran into the house to fetch a candle. When she returned she handed the lighted candle to the man she thought was a policeman who in the very next moment proved her assumption to be wrong.

With one quick movement he discarded his long outer garment and holding the candle to his chest Jane saw his hideous face staring at her with red glowing eyes. From his mouth flames of blue and white shot out from his mouth, for a moment Jane froze but was alert enough to notice that he was wearing a large helmet and a tight fitting white garment that resembled oil-skin. Once she gained her senses Jane turned to run up the path towards the house but the stranger leapt towards her catching hold of her dress and the back of her neck, as she struggled to free herself he grabbed her around the neck and with her head tightly under his arm began ripping her clothes with what seemed to her to be metal claws.

With considerable force she managed to to get free and continued to run along the path, but again he caught hold of her just as she reached the steps leading to the open front door, with all her strength she screamed as loud as she could as her once again tore at her dress, her neck, her arms and as his metal claws reached to her hair she felt clumps being pulled from her head. At last her sister heard her screams who managed to grab hold of Jane and bundle her inside slamming the door behind them. 

Even with the door closed and bolted he continued to bang loudly again and again, it only went quiet when the Alsop family appeared at the upstairs window and called loudly for the police. It's resonable to suggest no-one sleep much that night in the Alsop house especially Jane who was suffering from the shock of the nights events plus the pain from the injuries that had been inflicted as she struggle to get away from the grip of Springheel Jack for she was certain it was the monster who had been causing such fear in the outlying villages who had visited the Alsop house early that evening.

The police at the time throughly investigated the attack and at first suspected it had been a drunken 'prank' by a local man, for quite a few were seen out and about in the lanes that evening. After questioning, and at Jane Alsop's insistance that her attacker hadn't been a local man otherwise she would have recognised him, so eventually this became the first confirmed case against Spring Heel Jack.

A few days later two sisters were visiting their brother William who was a butcher at 20 Narrow Street Limehouse. During that evening their conversation had,. quite natually, turned to Spring Heel Jack so it's likely they were a little apprehensive when taking their leave and making their way home that evening. According to birth records Lucy was sixteen and the eldest of the sisters, Elizabeth was two years younger. As they turned into Green Dragon Alley Lucy was a little ahead of her sister and in the shadows she thought she saw a woman. The figure was tall and to Lucy's eyes appeared to be wearing a cape and bonnet.

No sooner had this thought ran through her mind when the figure emerged from the shadows but it was no woman but a fire spurting monster, she sceamed and tried to run but it was too late for in that instant she was to become the latest victim of Spring Heel Jack. As the flame hit Lucy's face she became blinded and fell to the ground where she became seized with fits that lasted for several hours. Seeing her sister attacked in this way Elizabeth screamed out for help, her brother heard her screams and ran to the alley where her found Elizabeth kneeling over her striken sister trying to help her back to conscienceness.

Once he had carried Lucy back to his house he learned from Elizabeth what had happened. The assailent she described as tall and thin wearing a cape and carrying a bullseye lamp, he didn't try to touch either of them but simply walked away as Lucy fell to the ground. She also added that he had a gentlemanly demeanour. Thankfully Lucy's blindness proved to be temporary, eventually she recovered from her ordeal and on the 1851census when she is twenty nine we find her recorded as a servant living in the home of a Mr and Mrs Chapman of Streatham. Seven years later she married George Heath who was a widower five years older than herself and went on to have two sons.

His last appearance in the eastend was at at the house of a Mr Ashworth in Turner Street Whitechapel. As at the Alsop's home there was a knock at the front door which a young servant boy answered. On being asked for his employer the young boy turned to fetch him as he did so he caught sight on the clawed hands so instead of fetch Mr Ashworth the young boy sent out the cry that Spring Heel Jack was there and soon the street began to fill with people. It's said, by the young boy, that Jack only escaped by jumping over a roof of one of the houses. As well as telling the police that before leaving Jack had shook his clawed fist in his face while his eyes glowed red, while doing this the boy said he saw the inside of the cape and the large decorative letter 'W' embroidered there.

It was that one single letter, seen or imagined by the young boy, which caused suspicion to fall on the Marquess of Waterford. Henry de la poer Beresford third Marquess of Waterford was suspected because of his reputation as a hoaxer, perhaps that is too a mild word to use for he had been described as a rowdy boisterous ruffian, who had a streak of cruelty in his nature. Seeing that he was also in London at the times of the attacks is perhaps why he was considered, as we say in todays parlance, a person of interest.

His companions were no different, the rich and idle who got their fun by being an annoyance to anyone who came there way. Also he enjoyed the company of prize fighters and prostitutes anyone in fact that were on the edge of accepted society.

His sense of humour was a destructive one, he used to find it hilarious to challenge complete strangers to a fight, he fought a duel, painted Melton red, and once painter the pasons horse with aniseed then proceeded to chase him down with blood-hounds.

Although he seemed to be the person that many people regarded as being responsible for the emergence of Spring Heel Jack he was never charged or even questioned. Although the attacks stopped in London reports of Spring Heel Jack continued from different parts of the country.

Then in 1859 it was reported that the Marquess had died in Ireland following a fall from his horse. Those that had been victims of Spring Heel Jack must have breathed a sigh of relief that no-one else would come face to face with the fire breathing monster. However that proved to be a little previous for the attacks by Spring Heel Jack continued until 1904...............So just who, or what, was it that terrified the country for over sixty years and brought terror to the eastend in 1838?

However fifty years after Springheel Jack's first attack in the eastend another Jack roamed the crowded streets in that part of London and his terror was such that even now his crimes remain some of the most gruesome in history.

The Mystery of the French Count

There are hundreds, or more, statues in every city throughout the world and for the majority it's easy to find out the reason why they have been erected, sometimes however it's not that easy and it some cases the reason is lost , here is one such case.

At the junction of Abbey Road and Abbey Lane. The first name listed amongst the dead of World War 1 is that of Comte Robert de Lesseps, Legion d'honneur and Croix de Guerre.

Robert was the son of Ferdinand, Vicomte de Lesseps, the man responsible for digging the Suez Canal and Robert was also the great-nephew of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III.

The memorial is not a municipal one but that of the Crocketts' Leather-cloth factory, which used to be sited here. Robert died in 1916 and had been an early pioneer aviator and a friend and student of Bleriot. But why should Crocketts directors wish to remember him in this way?

Why indeed, that's the question I set out to answer but failed, the factory has long gone it was demolished in the 1960's and replaced by a council estate called Leather Gardens. So what of the man himself ? As it notes in the piece above he was the son of Ferdinand, Vicomte de Lesseps who was responsible for the building of the Suez canal which linked the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. The origins of de Lesseps' family are traceable back as far as the end of the 14th century. His ancestors, it is believed, came from Scotland, and settled at Bayonne during the region's occupation by the English.

Robert was born in Paris on the 23rd May 1882, he was one of five brothers and six sisters, his mother, Helene Autard de Bragard was Ferdinand's second wife they married sixteen years after the death of his first wife Agathe Delamalle with who he had five children, only two survived to adult hood. Helene was twenty one when she married Ferdinand who was forty three years her senior, as well as the eleven children who grew to adulthood they lost one child in infancy.

The de Lesseps children grew up in an age when it was the fashion for aristocratic families to dress their children, whether they be boys or girls in an almost identical way. Robert was the tenth child born, but as one of his siblings, his sister Eugenie Marie had died in infancy in 1874 it meant Robert was the ninth child at the time the photo was taken. Therefore as he was at the time he must be the child in his mothers arms.

On the 27th February 1902 he married Marthe Sophie Alland in Belgium and they had two children, Nicole and Robert jnr.

As the brothers grew to adulthood were swept up in the frenzy of manned flight, as it seemed were the rest of the world, and maybe it was the flying feats of fellow countryman Louis Bleriot who inspired the de Lesseps brothers.

He was the first person to cross the English channel in manned flight, this happened in July 1909 and as news of the successful event happened Louis Bleriot became world famous. 

Amazing as this seemed to the people of that time it was less than a year later in May 1910 that Jacques de Lesseps had following Bleriot's path and crossed the channel. Perhaps it was then that his brothers realised that Jacques would always be the 'star of the show'.

Today when we have seen man walk on the moon and probes sent throughout

the universe we may find it hard to understand just how unbelievable it must have been for people in those days when they saw men flying these tiny machines, in the past they may have seen, or heard of, balloon flight but this relied on the weather to propel them through the air but planes were under the sole control of the aviator.

Back to the meet I think we can assume that Jacques wasn't the type to conform to the constraints of a flying meeting and we would be right. On July 2nd Jacques climbed into his La Scarabee and for nearly fifty minutes flew over the city of Montreal, becoming the first person to fly over a Canadian city. The local newspaper 'The Observer' recorded his flight as such ''Startled people in the streets cheered loudly at the sight of La Scarabee turning circles in the sky above them. Some women standing in a field near Valois waved a French flag as they cried "Vive le comte!"So impressed were the Mohawk elders of the Caughnawaga reserve that they made de Lesseps an honourary member of the tribe.''

1910 proved to be a busy year for the de Lesseps brothers. That year they decided to try a design that had been used a couple of years before for their next aircraft, it was based on the a bird in flight, the frigate bird as can be seen in the picture of Robert de Lesseps taking it for a test flight. Three 'La Fregate' monoplanes were built.

Also in 1910 Jacques attended a meet in Toronto where at the following dinner in one of the cities most exclusive clubs he met Sir William MacKenzie president of the Canadian Northern Railway. The two men got on so well that Jacques was invited to the Mackenzie which was a large rambling home in Kirkfield. It was while Jacques was at the MacKensie home that he met Grace the youngest of the railroad president three daughters. Whether there was an instant attraction is not known but over the coming weeks the two grew very close. 

Later in the year Jacques went to compete in New York and the three sisters went to support him. While there he took Grace for a flight which made her the first Canadian woman ever to fly, news of this was carried in the New York Times and when Sir William read this he ordered his daughters home at once.

In spite of this their affair continued and the following year on the 25th of January 1911 Grace and Jacques married at the Roman Catholic church of St James , Spanish Place, London. The reception for their guests was held at Claridges, afterwards they spent their honeymoon in Egypt before making their home in Paris. Their first child was born in December 1911 and three followed, the last child born in 1918.  All four children were born in France.

The link that the company had a branch in Paris might be tenuous but there is nothing else to be found to link Robert to the company.

 Leathercloth was first patented by J.R & C.P Crockett of Newark New Jersey. In 1857 Leathercloth co obtained the sole rights. They then built a works in Abbey Road Stratford, The site had previously been a gutta percha works but originally the  the site of the parish workhouse. In 1955 the firm was taken over by a Lancashire company and eventually closed in 1961.

The leather cloth was advertised for all public service vehicles such as trains, coaches and in 1860 for use on stages. The New Jersey company where the leather cloth was invented and patented was later sold to their parteners in West Ham. As biplanes came into being it's not such a stretch of the imagination to see the material could also be used for the seating.

So far the brothers had used their skills for the amusement and amazement of other but fate had a very different use for those skills, On the 28th June 1914 a shot rang out in Sarajavo which was heard around the world and drew the de Lesseps brothers were drawn into the chaos and slaughter that was world war one.

Robert was recruited at Châteauroux as a lieutenant in the cavalry of the 27th regiment of Dragons, later he was seconded to the 7th armored cars and cannons. The bloodiest battle of the war began of the 1st July 1916 and ended on the 18th November the same year, today its name encapsulates the sheer waste of young life, it was the battle of the Somme.

On the first day there was a loss of 58.000 British troops a third of them killed, others badly wounded. The death toll continued rising through the summer months until the beginning of winter when finally it was deemed as ended, the ground gained was a mere 25 miles long and 6 miles wide but the cost in human life and suffering was immeasurable 420.000 casualties for the British, 195.000 for the French and 650.000 for the Germans. Among the French casualties was Comte Robert de Lessep who died of his wounds on the 4th of September 1916 of war wounds. Legion of honour and posthumous Croix de guerre

Robert wasn't the only one of the brothers who died during the war, his elder brother Ferdinand died a year before. Ferdinand was born 27th of November 1871, he was forty two when the war was declared.

Ferdinand hand represented France in fencing and Sabre at the 1908 olympics. In world war one he served as a cavalry officer. A year after the war had begun he was a captain in the third regiment cavalry unit serving in Africa. It was in the same year that Ferdinand was killed. His death certificate states he was killed during trench warfare on the 30th. September 1915.

The war lasted for four years from 1914 until 1918 and the measure of slaughter during those four years is the number of casuaties, although no-one has been able tocalculate the number correctly it's accepted that of the allied forces over five million troops were killed and suffered nearly nine million casualties plus over four million prisoners or missing. When the war ended in 1918 the world would never be the same again for a generation had been lost in a war that solved nothing.

Bernard was the last brother to die in warfare, he died on he 28th August 1918 just six weeks before the war came to an end. Like Ferdinand he was recruited in Paris, and also like Ferdinand he too represented France at fencing in the 1908 olympics. He was also accompanied Jaques to Canada in 1910, for he was just as enthusiastic about aviation as his brother.

Bernard was 'killed in action' at the battle of Catiginy Oise, this was the first time that the American troops, who fought along the French troops, had been involved in a sustained offensive. Jacques also served in the war using his skills as a aviator he flew at night to defend Paris against the German threat of Zeppelins.

He also flew reconnaissance missions enabling the allies to gain much needed intelligence of the German lines. In the last year of the war he had flown at least ninety five bombing missions not counting reconnaissance or photography flights. For his service he recieved the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d'honneur from the French government and the Distinguished Service Medal from the government of the United States.

When the war ended Jacques his former squadron leader form a company offering aerial photography, he asked Jacques to join him which meant using flying boat to get the photographs, sometimes the camera was mounted on the plane other times it was hand held out of the plane by a crew member.

In 1926 he was employed by Quebec's Ministry of Forests to photograph the Gaspe penninsular to enable the mapping of the area. In less than two years he and his mechanic had photographed over 80,000 square kilometers.

In October 1927 while on an exploratory flight over the Gulf of St Lawrence Jacques and his mechanic Theodor Chichenko. The wreckage of the plane was soon found, but for several weeks the body lay undiscovered in Newfoundland, the body of his mechanic has never been found. The funeral of Jacques de Lesseps was held in Gaspe on December 14, 1927. In 1932, and five years later a monument was erected in his memory in the town.

The last remaining de Lesseps brother Paul, who was the first man to fly around the Eiffel Tower died in 1947 following a spell of imprisoment The 14 Jan 1947 Time Magazine said about him that: ''Paul de Lesseps, 63-year-old son of the famed Suez Canal builder, was down with heart trouble and a sense of persecution in Fresnes Prison. The French Government said that Prisoner de Lesseps, who owned land in Turkey, had offered to sell it to the Germans, for bases from which to bomb Suez. De Lesseps' reply: the Government owed him five billion francs for land confiscated in World War I, now condemned him 'to avoid paying.' 

Perhaps I haven't answered the question as to why the Compte Robert de Lesseps is remembered at Stratford, and maybe I've spent too much time on his brothers, but by doing so hopefully there is a little more substance to a brave man than just a forgotten name carved in a monument far from his native land.

The memorial was paid for by the directors of the Leather Cloth facory in respect for their workers lost in two world wars. There are two sides to the memorial on one side 'In memorial to those who gave their lives for freedom 1914/1918.'  On the other side is ‘In Memory of those Service and Civilian Employees who lost their lives in 1939/1945.

Comte Robert de Lessops, Legion De Honnere and Croix de Gueere.
Private HT Baker
Private F Bishop
Private F Bristow
Rifleman F Cooper
Lance Corporal Charles Edwards
Private JG Finch
Private WF Grey
Private H Holding
Sergeant WG Holmes
Private H Honeybell
Rifleman R Johnes
Private Edward Rice
Rifleman H Turner
Private George Wright

1939-45’.
Mrs A Baker
O/Tel Seaman JJ Beadle
Mr F Bishop (note there is also an F Bishop on the WW1 side)
Mr W Burdett
Private RA Cook
Sgt Pilot AE Fisher
A.B Seaman NH Pitts
Mrs A Rapley
Sgt A/G WC Thomas
Private J Walker